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<title>I spoke your name (out loud to the room) by objectlesson</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369120">I spoke your name (out loud to the room)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson'>objectlesson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Internal Monologue, M/M, Pining, Self-Hatred, This is literally just sad angsty Geralt thoughts, Unrequited Love, Vignettes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:21:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,151</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You wish Jaskier would leave you the fuck alone, but he clings to you like ash after flames have laid waste to a village, like clotted crimson after you have killed something with your bare hands. </p>
<p>However, you can scrub blood out from under your nails. Jaskier, so far, has proven to be far more indelible.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>213</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I spoke your name (out loud to the room)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wanted to write Witcher smut but I had too many sad head canons about Geralt to really move forward with the filthy so I had to get this piece of misery out of my system first. I posted it on tumblr and so many people enjoyed it I thought I'd dump it on here too. Enjoy. Also, playing fast and hard with canon here, Ive never read the books or played the games, I watched the series in two days while tipsy, so.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You wish Jaskier would leave you the fuck alone, but he clings to you like ash after flames have laid waste to a village, like clotted crimson after you have killed something with your bare hands. </p>
<p>However, you can scrub blood out from under your nails. Jaskier, so far, has proven to be far more indelible. </p>
<p>The best thing to do, you’ve found, is endure him. Tune out his idle songs, his incessant humming, the way he always leans in too close and chews his bottom suggestively when he’s had too much ale and is foolishly trying his luck with you for the hundredth time. </p>
<p>You give Jaskier nothing, none of your energy, none of your precious few words. You walk away mid-sentence. You correct him every time he assures you that he is your friend. And if you are <em>not</em> giving him nothing, you’re giving him everything, so he does not think there is a single moment the two of you <em>share. </em>When he asks you for half of your bread-roll, instead of tearing it you hand over the entire thing. He might follow you like pain, he might linger like the scent of death. He might walk side beside you and Roach for miles upon miles. But you are not <em>together.</em></p>
<p>Still, it is his ragged breath which lulls you to sleep at night. It is not comforting, but it is something. </p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>Jaskier believes you deny all his advances because you are disgusted by him, or that you fancy yourself too good for his affections, or that you prefer women. He believes he will wear you down one day, that your solitude will begin to ache long enough to consider him a viable solution to warm the tundra of loneliness. He believes he simply and <em>purely</em> irritates you, and that eventually, you’ll grow weary of it and just fond enough to crumble to his tide. </p>
<p>He thinks you don’t want him, and that’s why you won’t let him get any closer. </p>
<p>He’s never considered that you <em>do</em> want him, and <em>that</em> is why you <em>cannot</em> let him get any closer. </p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>Self-loathing feels too generous a phrase to describe your decades-long state of being. It’s more realistic than that, a simple fact: you are dangerous, your life is dangerous. And more than that, you are <em>old. </em>Hardened by killing things, from making poor choices that have haunted you for endlessly, from traveling outside society because every time you’ve attempted to push into its tender underbelly you’re spat back out, chewed up and scarred. You can love, but no one thinks you can. So it is easier, somehow, to let them believe that, and never allow yourself to feel in such a way you might prove them wrong. </p>
<p>You used to wonder if being a Witcher <em>had</em> to be this way, or if there was some magic solution to the long journeys with no one but your horse to talk to, the constant, maddening ache of being feared and needed at the same fucking time. The yawning chasms of time between jobs, when you traveled and rode and tried to convince yourself it was better this way. That you preferred it. You know, now, that magic doesn't work like that. This is your identity, this is your destiny. Moments scattered far and few between with people who won’t be there in the morning, Empty forests, smoking coals, the back booth of taverns in the hours after midnight, or before noon. </p>
<p>But Jaskier is fool. </p>
<p>He thinks you’ve never once in your (too long) life considered what it might be like if someone stayed. He thinks he’s an exception, that he’ll prove you wrong. </p>
<p>You try hard to tell him otherwise, but doesn’t listen to you.</p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>Jaskier is an improbable, terrible thing. Eyes the color of sunny days, or new snow falling into still running water. He’s <em>relentless, </em>always singing, always touching, always smiling at you like there’s some wild chance you might smile back. He smells like spice and ale and salt and sun, and sometimes it becomes so cloying it sits on the back of your tongue and you must swallow it down like a pit, like a sob. </p>
<p>You would have fucked him a long time ago, if you thought that was all he wanted. If you thought it would make him <em>leave. </em>But he’s made it clear that for some fucking reason, he’s in this mess for the long haul. If not to be held down with his legs over your shoulders, if not to suck your cock before he sits on it, then to write thinly veiled love songs about you and pretend you might be charmed by it. To trip after Roach like a shadow. To wear you down into tolerating him. Into loving him. </p>
<p>You <em>already</em> fucking love <em>fucking</em> Jaskier. You were awfully, embarrassingly quick to love him. That’s why you can’t look at him. Why you refuse to listen to him, why you won’t share your bread. Why you sleep on the floor and wake up with an aching back all the times he’s booked lodging with one bed. Why you wish he’d find some other monster-killer to pathetically trail. You love him, and the world thinks you cannot love. You love him, and will die bloody, perhaps tomorrow. You love him, and you are destined to hurt the people you love. You love him, and he only <em>thinks</em> he loves you, because he doesn’t know how ugly things are inside the cage of your old, old bones. </p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>Jaskier has made it quite clear he’s there for the taking, were you so inclined. He writes songs about the dirty-snow shade of your hair, the gold of your eyes, the broad span of your shoulders, the sculpted shape of your mouth. There have been at least three times he’s drunkenly begged for it, writhing around on a straw-cot half-naked, promising he’ll never act so base and awful again if you’d <em>only just</em> let him put his mouth on you. He’s good at it, he says. You do not doubt this. </p>
<p>You do doubt, however, that allowing Jaskier to touch you can happen just once. He thinks you’re a wall, but you are a dam. You’ll flood him if you know what he tastes like. And he’ll tread water, for a little while. He’ll gloat as he sinks. But eventually, he will drown. Or else, he will swim to shore, stagger onto the bank dripping, wringing out his shirt, hair in a black slick across his pale forehead as he tells you <em>thanks for that, Witcher. But I must live more, before I die. </em></p>
<p>And even then, you would be relieved to see him go, because he’d be right. There are safer places to be, for the both of you. Plus, you liked your life better when there wasn’t someone reminding you have left to lose. </p>
<p>—-</p>
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